Russia’s new national payment system – set up just weeks ago – crashed for five hours yesterday. Under legislation that was drawn up last year, international credit card operators such as Visa and Mastercard have since April 1 been required to use the system or make a security deposit with the Central Bank worth 25% of the average daily turnover of all their card transactions in the previous quarter.
Both Visa and Mastercard agreed to participate, but no transactions made on the cards between 2:15 a.m. and 7:10 a.m yesterday morning Moscow time went through. “I can only say that it isn’t a system failure. The crash wasn’t caused by hardware or software related problems,” the system’s CEO Vladimir Komlev told Interfax.
Analysts had warned that the speed of the system’s implementation could lead to teething troubles.
Russia is planning to start issuing its own credit cards by the end of the year.
New national payment system crashes for five hours, three weeks after launch
Source: The Moscow Times